At Home: Telegraph Hill one-bedroom comfortable, low-maintenance

Tools

More than half the time, Mark Bagley is traveling for work. So when his plane lands at SFO, he wants to head somewhere comfortable, welcoming and low-maintenance: home.

“Home is a place to come back to,” says Bagley, a product management lead at Symantec, whose business trips have taken him from Singapore to New York, Tokyo to Oklahoma City, Los Angeles and Dublin.

“It’s comfortable,” he says. “It’s a place where I can relax or be creative.”

There’s plenty of creativity around Bagley’s one-bedroom apartment at the foot of Telegraph Hill.

A songwriting studio dominates one end of the living room. Basses abound — including a handmade 1990 Paul Reed Smith and a Music Man StingRay 5 — as well as a large array of electronic equipment that allows Bagley to compose on a keyboard, bass guitar or computer. He also takes music with him on the road, including the composing setup: a miniature keyboard and drum pad lets him compose on the road.

“That’s one of the advantages of having all your [music] in software,” Bagley says. “It’s all right there.”

The visual arts are also a big part of Bagley’s life: his walls are decorated with photos he’s taken, and with original paintings done by a good friend, with themes ranging from dark shadows to nature to Bagley’s favorite, a vibrant red, yellow and blue piece dubbed “Rasta guy.” One particularly arresting piece, hanging above the bed, is a canvas that has been painted, cut into a spiral shape and then stitched together to give a 3-dimensional, multimedia effect.

Relaxation is another key to Bagley’s furnishings and decor. A dark leather baseball-stitched sofa, bought in Singapore when Bagley lived there in 2006-07, invites lounging for movies or television, and a minimalist, modernist Cartel coffee table holds magazines for browsing.

Finally, at the north end of the apartment, there’s a window that opens out onto a sliver of a Bay view, letting the San Francisco breezes welcome the traveler home.